Sandra Knauf was born in California and spent most of her childhood in Missouri. She moved to Colorado when she was a teenager, and she lives there to this day, in Colorado Springs with her family. She is the publisher and editor of Greenwoman Magazine, a garden writing magazine, which she started in 2010. Her work has appeared in The Denver Post, GreenPrints, Colorado Gardener, and many other publications, and she has been a guest commentator on NPR’s “Western Skies” radio show. Zera and the Green Man is her first novel.
On the eve of Zera Green’s fifteenth birthday, she’s finding little to celebrate. Her guardian, Uncle Theodore (whom she’s nicknamed “the Toad”), and his frilly girlfriend, Tiffany, are dragging her to the opening of a fast-food restaurant. There they’ll celebrate The Toad’s latest GMO creation—“beefy fries”—fries made from a combination of cow and potato. (They are said to be delicious, but the potatoes bleed a little when they’re sliced.)
Growing a garden is one of the best ways to improve your quality of life and support a sustainable, healthy environment. Accordingly, we turned to former US Represented staff writer Sandra Knauf for advice since this is one of her areas of expertise. In a recent conversation, she gave us ten reasons to grow a garden. Most […]
Ten Reasons to Grow a Garden: A Conversation with Sandra Knauf Read More »
Winter is a dangerous time of year for a gardener. The catalogs feature rediscovered heirloom seeds with gorgeous sounding names: Dragon’s Tongue beans, Crimson Curtain and Banana Leg tomatoes, Painted Serpent cucumbers, King of the North peppers. They sound like legends and poetry. The herbs sound like characters from old fairy tales with names like
Our Green Heritage: Heirlooms & Hothouses Read More »
Who says bigger is better? While most Americans seem to prefer the larger breeds—hunting dogs, guard dogs, herding dogs, and working dogs—I’m a cheerleader for companion breeds. And the smaller, the better. Why, I wonder, do they always come in last in the popularity contests? Is it a holdover from our rural history, when Timmy
Ten Reasons Why Small Dogs Are the Best Dogs Read More »
(Image #1: “Little Finger” Carrots from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds) A few Aprils ago I received a small seed order from Baker Creek that included “Little Finger” carrots. Now, I like carrots fresh from the garden as much as anyone, but I wasn’t thinking about food when I ordered these seeds. I was thinking about
Game of Thrones Garden Read More »
Sandra Knauf has worn many hats in her garden writing career—she’s been a “Colorado Voices” columnist for The Denver Post and her work has appeared nationally in publications that include GreenPrints and Mary Janes Farm; she’s shared her work locally here on USR and on Colorado Springs’s NPR affiliate radio station KRCC. In 2011, she
Interview with Sandra Knauf, Author of Please Don’t Piss on the Petunias Read More »
As is true for most readers of garden lit, Joel Salatin entered my awareness in 2006 via Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma. While I had always been interested in farming and food production, I equated Salatin, a self-described “Christian libertarian environmentalist capitalist lunatic Farmer” with ranching, and so wasn’t compelled, right off, to read his
Joel Salatin (America’s Libertarian Agrarian Intellectual) Reveals His Writing Secrets Read More »